


We Were Made to Thrive

by DeerstalkerDeathFrisbee



Series: True Love or Something [41]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Birthday Fluff, Families of Choice, Family Fluff, Fluff, Found Family, Gen, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TLOS, Halloween, ITS BEEN A JOURNEY, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2019-12-09
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:01:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21726439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeerstalkerDeathFrisbee/pseuds/DeerstalkerDeathFrisbee
Summary: “Anything you want to do for your birthday?”Acxa shrugs, “Eat cake.” That seems like a safe bet."Any preference?”“Anything Hunk makes.”“Noted,” Keith smiles, slightly crooked.“And no singing,” Acxa decides, now that she’s thinking about it for real.“Hear that, Lance,” Keith calls, “No singing!”“WHAT?!” Lance practically shrieks from the kitchen.It's Acxa's twelfth birthday.
Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Series: True Love or Something [41]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/602497
Comments: 76
Kudos: 567





	We Were Made to Thrive

**Author's Note:**

> WHAT'S UP, FRIENDS? I live! It's the third anniversary of TLoS this weekend so I thought I'd post this fic that's been sitting unfinished on my desktop for months. All my love and gratitude to everyone who's interacted with this series all this time. Thank you for your comments, kudos, subscriptions and support, you all mean so much more to me than you know. 
> 
> Full disclosure, I had a bit of a crisis of confidence over the original fic adaptation for TLoS and had to take a little break for a while. I should be back to working on it soon. I got into one of those writer-crisis spirals over whether it was actually 'original' or anywhere near as good as the fic version, whether people would even like or read it, you know, all the regular stuff we anxious content creators worry about, lol! 
> 
> Anyway, that's still in the works, I haven't quit yet! I'm too stubborn for that! I'll be back to working on it now that grad school's done for the semester. I'm also working on a completely original fantasy novel at the moment. I'll try to keep y'all updated on that one too. 
> 
> As always, thank you and enjoy!

**We Were Made to Thrive**

Keith is not a morning person. This is established fact. So when he wakes up to his husband’s face inches away from his own, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, smelling of coffee and positive energy he growls under his breath and closes his eyes again.

“Unless you’re here for morning sex, fuck off.”

Lance just pokes him in the face. Keith would hit him with a pillow but his face is buried in his own pillow and he has a snuggly death grip on Lance’s discarded pillow so that’s out.

Lance is unfazed, “I thought of something.”

Keith mumbles “Oh good god” under his breath.

“Acxa’s birthday.”

“What about it?”

“Do you think she wants a surprise party?”

Keith sits straight up, frowning mightily, and whacks Lance on the head with his own pillow. “You woke me up for _that_?”

Lance grabs the pillow away from him and whacks him right back, “ _Yes._ It’s an important question!”

Keith sighs and flops backwards onto the bed. “Lance.”

“Yes, Keith? Darling? Babe? Light of my life?”

Keith gives him a flat look before his gaze slips away to fix on the ceiling. “Acxa has spent the majority of her life with adults who don’t give a shit about her. She is going to expect her birthday to be forgotten just like every other personal milestone. A surprise party, as well-intentioned as that could be, will only make her feel like we’ve forgotten her, just like everyone else, for the majority of the time leading up to the surprise. This year we need to make it clear that we know when her birthday is, we want to do something for her, and that we want it to be something she likes, so we’re asking for her input upfront. Make sense?” He looks back at Lance only to see his husband’s eyes shining with some unnamed emotion. Keith scrunches his face up. “What?”  
Lance plants a smacking kiss on his forehead, then a soft, lingering kiss on his lips, “You have your moments, babe. And when you do, they’re incredible.”

Keith still doesn’t get it, but it’s too early to really have coherent anything about anything, so he just rolls his eyes and turns over. “Come back to sleep when you’re done being weird.”

Lance actually cackles at that and speeds off, so Keith figures he’ll deal with whatever follows from that later. He has a sleep deficit to catch up on.

…

Acxa’s birthday is in October. She likes October. She likes the crisp air and the crunch of the leaves and the way everything turns orange and gold as summer slips away. She’s not overly attached to her birthday because most of the time it’s glossed over. If she had a teacher who kept track of whose birthday was when and hers fell on a school day sometimes her class would sing to her and sometimes she would get an extra prize out of the good behavior prize box for her special day. (She kept a small hoard of good behavior prizes when she was little – pencils and stickers and light-up bouncy balls that she treasured far beyond their monetary worth – until one of the older kids found the shoebox she hid her treasures in and laughed at them. It hadn’t even been a very mean laugh, but it made Acxa feel stupid and small and kind of like a baby so she stopped saving up her little prizes and started just taking the candy in the box and eating it right there instead of carrying it home to be mocked or stolen).

At home, wherever that was for the moment, her birthday wasn’t a big deal. It wasn’t any kind of deal. It was just another day.

So because her birthday was in October and because her birthday wasn’t a big deal to the people around her, she decided to focus all her festive, celebratory energy toward something that people did pay attention to – Halloween.

It helps that Acxa loves Halloweeen. She loves cheesy horror movies and ghost stories and costumes and jack-o-lanterns. She likes purple and black and orange and Halloween means she can wear all those colors and skeleton-themed clothes without her teachers shooting her concerned looks.

Keith and Lance love Halloween too, which does not surprise her, but they each love it in entirely different ways, which does. Lance loves the cute parts of Halloween – the kids in pint-sized costumes, the candy, the pranks and silliness. Lance is a Casper the Friendly Ghost type of Halloween fan. Keith likes bad horror movies, terrifying stage makeup, and making food look as gross and gory as humanly possible. He also reads _Macbeth_ , Bram Stoker’s _Dracula_ , and Mary Shelley’s _Frankenstien_ every year. Keith is a Tim Burton type Halloween Fan if Time Burton has a sordid affair with Lord Byron. Keith and Lance compromise on their extremely antithetical Halloween world views in one area – they both love ‘The Addams Family’ and will marathon it every Halloween night while handing out candy to kids and drinking hot apple cider spiked with whiskey and cinnamon vodka (which Acxa learnd about from Pidge, who does not stop to think about whether or not it’s appropriate to tell pint-sized people about adults’ alcoholic escapades.)

“Hey munchkin,” Lance says, swinging into the kitchen the first weekend in October, “You down to go pumpkin-picking?”

Acxa agrees because she assumes they’re just going to the grocery store. Acxa is wrong. They’re going to a farm.

“This is admittedly not what I expected when I agreed to this,” she remarks dryly when she steps out of the car and gets a deep whiff of dried leaves and assorted nature smells.

“Honestly, me neither,” Keith remarks as he strolls up the parking lot to meet them, hands shoved deep in his pockets, Hunk, Pidge, and Jack of all people trailing behind him.

“Where am I? Is there coffee?” Pidge grumps. She’s staggering and weaving badly enough that Hunk kneels down and just lets her swing up onto his shoulders. She goes limp like a human backpack and he doesn’t even break his stride. Jack is squinting suspiciously at all the bucolic tranquility and honestly he and Keith have never looked more similar.

Acxa shelves that thought for later.

“Why are we here?” she asks.

Lance grins insouciantly, “Hunk wanted some fresh apples and squash for cooking!”

“Hunk is not you.” Acxa points out.

“None of your sass,” Lance quips, smile not shifting.

Keith draws even with them and gently socks Lance in the shoulder, “Hunk is not you. Why are we here?”

Lance grips his arm in exaggerated agony and whines, “You’re teaching her bad habits!”

Jack’s oddly the one to answer the question, “Lance thought pumpkin picking would be a ‘family bonding activity’.” He uses air quotes, then looks down at his hands as if they have betrayed him for doing such a thing. He stuffs the offending digits in his pockets and rocks back on his heels. “Seemed a good day for it.”

“You gave him more of an explanation than me?” Keith objects dryly.

Lance beams at him, “He seemed harder to convince. You just started going along with my whims after a few years.”

Keith looks like he wants to object, realizes he really can’t and throws a comradely arm around Acxa’s shoulders, “And you wonder why we have to gang up on you.”

Lance waves this concern off, “Hush now, darling, we have pumpkins to parse, squash to select, apples to appraise!”

Pidge groans into Hunk’s shoulder, “I could have kept coding instead of doing this.”

“No you couldn’t,” four adult voices chorus and their merry band takes off, Pidge still clinging to Hunk’s back like an overgrown koala.

…

Acxa sticks with Lance, mostly because he’s the one who brought her here and he’s the one she knows she’ll be able to find if she gets lost. He’s sort of hard to miss.

They drift away from the others after a few minutes and that’s fine. There’s something soothing about Lance’s steady chatter, his bright smiles constantly reassuring her that she’s welcome at his side. She enjoys spending time with Keith but sometimes his silence and inscrutability pings at some buried insecurity deep inside her and she finds herself asking questions just to get him to respond and reassure her that he’s just being quiet, he really does want her there with him. With Lance there’s never any question whether or not she’s welcome. He doesn’t just wear his heart on his sleeve; he wears it all over his face, in every line of his body, in every sweeping gesture of his hands.

“So,” Lance begins, “Keith told me that you told him that you like Halloween.”  
Acxa nods. That seemed like a safe piece of information to share. They’d been talking about books, Acxa watching as Keith dug through his boxes and boxes of worn paperbacks and pristine leather volumes and everything in-between as he searched for his Shakespeare and Shelley for the spooky season.

“And your birthday’s in October.” Lance’s voice is casual, but every nerve in Acxa’s body is on high-alert now, “So I thought maybe while we’re getting Halloween pumpkins for Jack-o-lanterns we could maybe pick up a special pumpkin to carve with something just for your birthday?” Lance offers, “That’s what my moms used to do for my sister Carly – her birthday’s in October too, but before yours – when we were growing up. That way you don’t feel like your big day is mashed in with a holiday season.” He hadn’t been looking at her, but now his eyes turn down to meet hers and his are big and warm and honest, “I’d say we’ll carve it together but it’ll mostly be Keith doing the knife-work. I cut myself the first two years we carved pumpkins together and now he doesn’t believe I understand knife safety.”

Acxa doesn’t know what to say, her mouth has gone dry, her tongue has fused with her teeth. She just nods mutely, then, shaking off the stunned paralysis, she meets his eyes, “I’d like that. A birthday pumpkin. I’d like that.”

Lance beams brighter than before, if that’s even possible, “Awesome! Then we can chat about anything else you want to do for your birthday, ok? I want you to have the best birthday ever, kiddo. You only turn twelve once!”

Acxa doesn’t know what to say to _that_ either, but they’re mercifully interrupted by Pidge falling asleep and slipping off Hunk’s back only for Jack and Keith to scramble to catch her, only to end up flattened themselves.

“We should have brought Shiro,” Keith is groaning and Jack just sighs heavily.

“I’m too old for this.”

Keith kicks him, “Too bad.”

Lance sighs, “Let’s go make sure they didn’t crush a pumpkin we’ll have to pay for.”

…

Keith apparently wears the same exact costume every Halloween, much to Lance’s distress. Keith is unperturbed by Lance’s distress.

“I paid a lot of money for my fangs,” Keith explains, “I’m getting my money’s worth.”

“They cost twenty bucks!” Lance objects.

“And they’re perfectly formed to my teeth and don’t make me lisp. Money well spent,” Keith counters.

“You just don’t want to have to do anything more than stick on your fangs, slap on some fake blood and wear all black!” Lance complains.

“Yeah,” Keith agrees, “That’s it exactly.”

Acxa used to be nervous whenever they started bickering. In her experience bickering always led to screaming or stony silences or tension slowly racheting up as the room’s walls seemed to close in around the. But Lance and Keith’s bickering always came with softened corners and blunt edges and always ended with eyerolls, choked back laughter or throwing balled up socks at each other and cackling.

Acxa had decided she likes it. It’s comforting to not have to constantly watch her words around people who are supposed to be her family.

“What do you want to be for Halloween?” Keith asks her after Lance throws up his hands in despair at his husband’s stubbornness and flounces back to the kitchen.

Acxa shrugs, “I dunno.”

“I can get you some fangs, like mine,” Keith offers over Lance’s objections from the kitchen.

“No thanks,” Axca says, through her own laughter at Lance’s dramatics.

“Okay,” Keith agrees easily, “Anything you want to do for your birthday?”

Acxa shrugs. She’s been thinking about it, just a bit, just in case they were serious about wanting to do something for her. “Eat cake.” That seems like a safe bet.

“Any preference?”

“Anything Hunk makes.”

“Noted,” Keith smiles, slightly crooked.

“And no singing,” Acxa decides, now that she’s thinking about it for real.

“Hear that, Lance,” Keith calls, “No singing!”

“WHAT?!” Lance practically shrieks from the kitchen.

Acxa laughs, “Maybe Lance can sing. But only at home. I don’t want waiters and random people singing at me. That’s weird.”

“Agreed,” Keith says firmly.

…

In the end the interns take Acxa costume shopping because apparently Alyssa called dibs. Acxa doesn’t know how to feel about this. She’s not used to being in such high demand that people feel the need to ‘dibs’ spending time with her. They bring Narti with them because Acxa asked nicely and Alyssa is a constitutionally incapable of saying ‘no’.

They lose Tony and Farid to the pirate section, where they enthusiastically start whacking each other with swords until a manager tells them to stop. Adela and Alyssa are doing a pair costume, Adela in a flight suit as Maria Rambeau and Alyssa striking dramatic poses as Carol Danvers. Narti moves slowly through the garments; arm in arm with Acxa, feeling fabrics and asking what each costume is. She falls in love with a satin-smooth Greek chiton and between them they put together a stunning Medusa costume, a serpentine headpiece to represent the snake hair.

“Medusa could turn people to stone just by looking at them,” Acxa tells her as she tries pieces on.

Narti smiles in her general direction, sightless eyes obscured by purple-tinted shades, but filled with warmth all the same. “Badass,” she says, enunciating clearly through her stutter. Acxa squeezes her hand since Narti can’t see the smile she’s turned her way.

In the end she cobbles together a convincing steampunk space pirate costume with the help of a slightly manic Alyssa (clearly riding her Captain Marvel costume high). Farid and Tony settle down and got for Zorro and Count of Monte Christo costumes (which Adela points out in an undertone, will probably just make people think they went for a Princess Bride group costume but didn’t have enough people to really make it work).

The ex-interns collectively refuse to let Acxa or Narti pay for anything, even though they both brough their carefully saved up allowances.

“Call it a birthday gift,” Adela says brusquely in a manner that leaves no room for objections.

Acxa decides to just say thank you and not argue the point.

…

Lance is dressing as a werewolf for Halloween. He’s wearing a ‘Team Jacob’ t-shirt circa 2008, gold contacts, and fake fur, claws, and fangs. Alyssa does a test-run of his makeup and Axca watches in fascination as the older girl transforms Lance into an extra from _Teen Wolf._

“I’m not wearing a ‘Team Edward’ shirt,” Keith deadpans from the bathroom doorway.

“Come on, babe,” Lance argues around his fake teeth.

Alyssa smacks his shoulder, “Don’t talk, the moulds won’t set right and your teeth will fall out.”

Lance pouts but shuts up.

“I’m not wearing any Twilight merchandise,” Keith re-iterates, “I’m a cool vampire.”

“Are you sure about that?” Axca asks from her perch on the countertop. “I mean, you do wear the same costume every year.”

Keith gives a put-upon sigh. “Alyssa, back me up. No Twilight.”

Alyssa shrugs, “Don’t look at me, I’m team ‘Bella should have stayed single’.”

Keith shrugs, “I mean, yeah, duh.”

Lance makes a weird keening noise around his fangs, “You read Twilight???”

“Stop talking!” Alyssa reprimands.

“It was literally everywhere for a very surreal few years,” Keith shrugs, “I read it just so I would know what everyone was talking about. I agree, Bella should have stayed single. All her problems were directly tied to her romantic entanglements. Also, the Cullens should have definitely told the local sheriff what was going on with the supernatural element. He’s the only one with more than two braincells in that whole freaky town, after all.”

Lance is staring at Keith like he’s never seen him before. “Who are you…”

“Stop talking!” Acxa and Alyssa chorus.

Lance shoots them all puppy dog eyes and is entirely ignored.

…

The day of her birthday Acxa is woken up by the smell of homemade waffles and coffee trickling upstairs to her room. She creeps downstairs, not sure what to expect but with a little hopeful butterfly fluttering in her stomach. She turns the corner to the kitchen to find her foster parents plating a massive breakfast spread. There’s orange juice and eggs and bacon and enough chocolate chip waffles to feed an army.

“Morning, birthday girl,” Lance calls.

“We got strawberry syrup,” Keith says, setting down his coffee and that’s just too much. They didn’t just make her a ginormous breakfast, they went out and specifically got her favorite syrup flavor, the type no one else eats, just because it’s her birthday.

Eyes watering, too full of feeling to say a thing, she lurches forward and throws her arms around the nearest parent. Lance startles a little but sets down the plate he was holding and wraps both arms around her. “Hey, hey, what’s wrong?”

“It’s too much,” she sniffs, “You’ve done too much.”

A hand falls on her shoulder, “Hey, kiddo, look at me,” Keith’s voice asks. She turns in Lance’s arms but can’t bring herself to meet Keith’s eyes, too ashamed of the tears still dripping down her flushed face. Keith doesn’t seem to mind, though, because he keeps talking, voice steady and certain. “This is what we do for birthdays in our family. We do it for my birthday and Lance’s birthday and Shiro and Hunk and Pidge and Allura. We’ll do it for Jack if he lets us. We make a big breakfast and eat it together before starting our day so no matter what happens, at least your birthday starts on a good note. Lance’s moms and Shiro taught me that. So we’re doing this for you because you’re part of this family now too, if you want to be, okay? You don’t owe anyone anything for this. You don’t need to feel singled out and weird. This is a family tradition that makes us happy and we’d like to share that with you if you’d like. But if it’s too much all at once we’ll wrap everything up and put it in the fridge. We’ll eat cereal and you’ll go to school and it’ll just be an ordinary day. Whatever you’d like, okay? We want you to have a happy birthday most of all.”

Acxa blinks away the water in her eyes. That’s probably the most words she’s ever heard Keith say at once. She wonders if he’s tired from all that talking. “No, it’s good, I’m just…I’m happy and confused and I’ve never had a birthday like this before. I didn’t realize what it’d be like.”

“Lots of big feelings to feel,” Lance observes and it should feel patronizing but it doesn’t, not from him.

“Yeah. Lots of big feelings to feel.”

“You know what helps with big feelings?” Lance asks.

“What?”

“Hugs. Can I have a hug, birthday girl?”

Acxa nods and turns to hug him all over again. “Thank you. Thank you both.”

They eat waffles together. There’s strawberry syrup and it’s just as good as she remembered. Maybe even better.

…

Narti gives her a giant cupcake at school. It’s chocolate with purple frosting and a strawberry jelly center. “Mom helped,” Narti whispers.

“I love it,” Acxa grins, and they split it between them. No one sings and honestly, it’s a relief. Acxa’s just getting used to this whole ‘actually celebrating her birthday’ thing. She’s pretty sure if anyone sang at her in public she might just burrow into the ground and become one of the mole people in shame.

…

The interns sing to her at the theatre after school because they’re terrible. For some reason, Acxa minds a lot less than she would anywhere more public than the green room. Maybe it’s because of how off-key warbly and off-key Farid is, and how Tony is the only one who’s even trying to stick to the tune. They give her a $50 gift card to Barnes and Noble. She gapes at them when she opens the card and they laugh when she blurts out, “That’s so many books!”

She spends the rest of the day running around helping the costume department, although Zethrid and Ezor drop by so Zethrid can present her with her birthday card and Ezor can press lipstick-sticky kisses to both her cheeks.

It’s a good afternoon.

…

At home they carve her birthday pumpkin and one by one every member of their makeshift family trickles in through the front door (and the dumbwaiter), bearing food. Lance makes empandas in the kitchen while Keith gets everyone drinks (boozy cider for the adults, sober cider for Acxa and anyone who wants it – Keith’s had two crockpots with spices and juice going all day and the whole house smells like fall). Shiro and Allura bring Shiro’s carmelized cauliflower and green beans with bacon, Pidge breaks out peanut butter cookies and dinner rolls while Hunk presents them with the most beautiful cake Axca has ever seen. Even Jack eyes shifty and tone awkward, holds out a pot of homemade chili when Keith answers the door. Coran bounds in with jalepeño poppers “guaranteed to bring a tear to your eye and a smile to your face!”.

None of the foods match at all. There’s no theme tying this meal together and Acxa _loves_ it. They eat family style, all gathered around Keith and Lance’s seldom-used dining table. (Shiro leans over and elbows Keith as they sit down, saying “aren’t you glad I convinced you to buy a table” to which Keith responds by shoving a peanut butter cookie in his mouth.) Acxa’s birthday pumpkin is grinning at them from the counter and they’re all sqished in together, elbowing each other and bickering playfully.

Presents in the living room follows and Acxa almost starts crying all over again at the sight of all her loot.

The evening ends with everyone sprawled out on couches, chairs, and the floor, Acxa curled up in her brand-new purple beanbag chair as they watch _Hocus Pocus_ and _Hotel Transylvania._ Between movies Acxa blurts out that she doesn’t know how Halloween is supposed to top this.

Shiro laughs, voice a warm rumble and nudges her beanbag with his foot, “Different kind of special day, kiddo.” _So that’s where Keith gets it from_ , Acxa thinks, “The goal is to make each special day good, not necessarily better than any of the other ones. And if you have a good birthday and a good Halloween, we’re doing it right.”

“Jeez, Shiro, when did you get so wise,” Pidge teases.

“He’s always been this way,” Keith groans, “It was such a pain when I was fifteen and hated everything.”

“Like you don’t hate everything now,” Pidge snorts.

“Hey, I like, like, five things!” Keith protests. He might be a little tipsy. But Keith tipsy doesn’t scare Acxa the way her mom used to.

“You can’t count people individually,” Pidge argues, “Family’s one thing, friends are another thing.”

“I also like books, my job, and food, so suck it,” Keith argues.

Lance claps, “I’m so proud of you, babe.”

“Am I a friend or family?” Hunk muses.

“If you’re in this room, you’re family,” Keith declares and snuggles closer to Lance. “You’re like a cousin or something. So’s Pidge. Acxa’s our kid, Shiro’s my brother, Allura is my sister in law, Jack is my dad, and Lance is my Lance. So there.”

He presses play on the movie before anyone can argue their new designations and Acxa grins to herself as she sinks even deeper into her beanbag. “I like being part of this family,” she announces as the FBI warning scrolls across the screen.

“We like you being part of our family, kiddo,” Shiro tells her, everyone else chiming in to echo the sentiment.

She falls asleep in her beanbag before the credits rolls but that’s okay. Someone presses a kiss to her forehead and whispers “Happy birthday, sweetheart,” before someone else wakes her up and steers to toward her room.

She crashes into her bed, _hers_ , in her house, _hers,_ with her new family on her birthday and falls asleep with a smile.

**Author's Note:**

> Fic title from 'Take on the World' by you me at six


End file.
